


An Overly Examined Life

by orphan_account



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Sexual exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:37:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goren thinks about the time he tried to kiss Eames, the times he never slept with Nicole Wallace and decides to try something new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Overly Examined Life

**Author's Note:**

> Some of Goren's fantasies about Nicole are a little creepy (but not violent). He is well aware of this, but maybe potential readers should be as well.

Goren prided himself on his ability to read people.  For all of Eames's little jokes about how he might be on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, jokes based on his pattern recognition, information retention and apparent social awkwardness, they both knew that people on the spectrum would never be able to pick up on every slight emotional cue suspects dropped here and there.  

Goren also prided himself on his knowledge of himself; his willingness to constantly take stock, his knowledge of his own weaknesses.  It was something he strove for in his quest to be a better man that also came in handy on the job.  Occasionally they'd get suspects who had some vague understanding of people other than themselves, and sometimes those suspects would try to turn the tables on Goren, not realizing that Goren did that to himself on a regular basis.  Like when Nicole tried to rattle him by asking him how old he was when he realized there was something not quite right about his mother.  That was something he'd spent years, decades really, thinking about, so he answered her quickly and with an emotional honesty that probably threw her more than anything else he could've said.

So his own astonishment with himself was the biggest surprise when he kissed Eames (although he was thinking of her as Alexandra in the moment; Eames was his partner, Alex was his friend and occasional drinking buddy, but Alexandra was a beautiful, intelligent, tolerant woman whom he happened to know from work).  He periodically took his feelings about his partner out to look at them, examine them, even _scrutinize_ them, but he always put them away again.  He knew Eames was out of his league even if she had been interested, and that wasn't a bad thing.  Her league wasn't any better or worse than his league, just different.  Bobby kept coming to the same conclusion: Alexandra Eames was the kind of woman he wanted in the abstract, the kind of woman he _wanted_ to want, but ultimately he really wanted someone like Nicole.  He didn't want to spill his own darkness on Alexandra (or Eames or Alex, for that matter, but as, respectively, his partner and his friend, he couldn't entirely shield her from it).  Nicole, though, or someone like her, could take his darkness, give it back to him.

Of course, his and Nicole's darkness would, had it ever come to that, eaten them both alive.  Sometimes, late on a restless night when sleep wouldn't come, Goren imagined that would actually be his perfect relationship: two damaged people, manipulating each other every step of the way, playing psychological and emotional games that twisted back on themselves with never a clear winner or loser.

The sex, Goren figured, would've been phenomenal.  Deeply, deeply disturbing, but phenomenal.  When he thought about it, just on those really bad nights, he imagined not just how they would touch each other, please each other physically, but how he would tell her, again and again, how good she was, how much she pleased him, being so good for him, so good to him, like she'd been made for him. The kind of praise he knew she'd long ago been conditioned to respond to.

As soon as he came, on those dark, long nights, he felt revulsion over his fantasies, terrified of what they said about him.  His only comfort was that when he actually was with women, he'd never lost himself like that, never lost his sense of who his partners were.  And if they were damaged (none of them quite so broken as Nicole and only one as broken as Goren himself), he'd already read them well enough to know what to stay away from.

Of course, in his fantasy, he was just as aware of who Nicole was as an individual, but because it was fantasy, and because it was _Nicole_ , he allowed himself to go directly to the heart of her, to say and do the things that would tear at her scar tissue.

But Alexandra Eames…he'd long decided that she was the ideal he could never allow himself to have.  He didn't deserve her and, in exactly the opposite meaning of the term, she didn't deserve him.  She deserved better.  Even if he hadn't realized that on his own, his brother's ugly and (mostly) inaccurate assessment of their relationship would've driven it home.

Long after he'd decided not to try for anything more with Alexandra than he already had (and Eames/Alex was already much more than he deserved, even leaving Alexandra out of the equation), though, he tried to kiss her.  Knowing it was wrong, knowing it could hurt him and destroy the life he was carefully constructing, didn't stop him.

The circumstances weren't all that important.  They hadn't been drinking, hadn't even been awake for days, hadn't been trying to crack a difficult case.  He just…tried to kiss her.

Not too surprisingly, she pulled away from him.  "Bobby, no," she said, her voice soft and low as she looked at him with tenderness and concern.  And sadness; Goren knew he wasn't imagining the complicated expression she'd given him, the underlying matrix of regret that things couldn't have been different between them, her own self-knowledge about who and what they already were to each other and that it was as far as it could ever go between them.

"Right," he'd said.  "You're right, of course.  I'm sorry.  I should…I should go home.  Go home now."

"It's okay," she'd said, but she'd still looked concerned.  She took his hand, squeezed it.  "Will you be all right?"

She wasn't worried that her turning him down would push him over the edge, Goren figured (although maybe that was a consideration).  He thought she was probably thinking that there was something seriously wrong in his life that he would have done that, tried to kiss her like that.  And she was right, but since it wasn't anything she could help him with, he told her he'd be fine.

The next day was surprisingly close to business as usual between them.  But Goren kept turning over the attempted kiss in his mind…well, not the kiss itself, but the underlying reasons he'd thought, however briefly, that trying to kiss her was a good idea.

He had to face up to the fact that he, generally speaking, wasn't having a whole lot of good ideas when it came to his personal life.  Or his professional life, which had, not long after the attempted kiss, come to an end.  He'd let himself be in limbo for nearly a year while Hannah worked on getting him and Eames back in the force.

He had nothing but time.  He spent two months going to the botanical garden every day, thinking back to Gerry Rankin all those years ago, pretending to go to work but really spending his days on a park bench.  He thought about what he wanted from life and was only vaguely alarmed, in a detached way, that he had no idea.  He wanted to go back on the force, but that was for a whole lot of people who weren't him to decide.  He figured that if they did take him back, there would be conditions and concluded that he'd meet them, whatever they ended up being.  

He wasn't sure if he wanted romantic love, but he was pretty clear on wanting sex.  Despite his depression, his physical desires were strong, stronger than they'd been in a long time.  Not like in high school, but still resurgent in ways that surprised him, given how fast fifty was bearing down on him.

He hit a few bars, had a few one night stands.  Something was missing, though, and after yet another long night of alternating fantasy and contemplation, Goren realized that he wanted to find a partner who could match him for size and strength, someone whom he couldn't break.  

A man.

That wasn't an entirely new thought; Goren had sometimes wondered about what it would be like to have sex with another man, and sometimes those thoughts were arousing.  Pretty steamy, even.  But it still took him some time to work up to acting on it.

He was in a bar, downtown enough to be artsy but not so far downtown to be Wall Street professional.  He sipped his whiskey, slowly.  He didn't want to be drunk or even slightly impaired for this.

The place had exposed brick, hipsters, a few goth holdouts and a seriously good jazz pianist.  Goren glanced over and was surprised to see that the musician was at least his age, probably a bit older.  Goren assessed him quickly: tall, dark hair and eyes, olive skin, lean physique but strong with it, intelligence evident in every gesture and expression.  Goren followed his mark's eyeline; oh, yeah, the guy was checking out everyone without regard to gender.

When he took a break, Goren went up to him.

"Great set," he said.  "Is there a rule against patrons buying the artist a drink?"

The man chuckled.  "Who knows these days?" he asked.  Goren liked his easy-going manner, although he knew just from watching him play that the guy was intense.

Goren smiled nervously while the guy checked him out.  He must've liked at least some of what he saw, decided to continue the conversation.  Such as it was.

"While I thank you for calling me an artist," he said, "I'm actually a patron, same as you."  He pulled out his wallet, gestured to the bartender.  "See, I even pay for my own drinks.  And yours," he added like it was an afterthought.

Goren knew it wasn't an afterthought; the guy had casual down to an art form, but that's just what it was: art.  Not nature, not for this guy.

While they waited for their drinks, Goren offered his hand.  "Rob," he said.  Why not try to be a whole new Robert Goren?  A Robert Goren whose family hadn't been crazy in nineteen different ways, a Robert Goren who flirted with men because he actually wanted it to go somewhere other than a conviction.

The guy shook his hand, looking at him more closely.  Goren was surprised at how…shivery…he felt while the guy looked him over.  Yeah, intense was definitely the word and for once Goren liked being on the receiving end of that kind of attention.

"Zach," the man said.  "But…Rob?  Really?"

Goren laughed, surprised at how easy it was.

"Not really," he confessed.  "But I'm, ah, trying out some new stuff."

"Hmm," Zach said.  "I bet you are."  The words should have been cheesy and insinuating, but they were more along the lines of a quiet observation.

The bartender dropped off their drinks.  Zach made a face at his.  That was actually kind of how Goren…Rob…felt about his own drink.

"What I really want," Zach said, leaning forward, creating intimacy, making Goren a co-conspirator, "is an ice cream cone."

Goren laughed, the kind of easy laughter he figured a guy like Rob could pull off.  "I'm pretty sure we can make that happen."

So they left the bar and found an ice cream truck, the silence between them easy and filled with city noise while they waited behind a bunch of drunk NYU students.

Cones in hand, they walked along Houston, turning south on Mulberry toward Little Italy.

"So this is really a new thing for you," Zach said.

Goren wondered what "Rob" would say to that.  "Rob" was not a particularly well thought-out construct, he realized, so he decided to just go with being himself.

"Yeah," he said.

"Big life changes?  Divorce?"  Zach looked sideways at Goren.

"Yes on the big life changes.  No on the divorce," Goren said, although some days not having the job to go to, not having Alexandra Eames to work with did feel like he figured divorce probably felt.

"The thing is," Zach said, looking away from Goren in a way that most people would not realize was avoidance, "I…uh…have a few ethics about that kind of thing."

"I see," Goren said neutrally, trying to keep disappointment at bay.

"'Cause normally I'd be all over you," Zach said, "but you seem like you're maybe a little messed up right now.  Uh, phrasing that badly.  Not like I think you're drunk or crazy or high.  I just…if this is really what you want but you've never done it before….  Well, that's more responsibility than I think I can handle.  You know?"

Goren did know, knew all too well.

"Could you…" Goren started, not sure how to ask for a simple little thing, not sure if it would violate Zach's ethical code.

"Uh, hell yeah?" Zach said and while he gave his response in the form of a question, Goren got the feeling that most of Zach's sentences ended on an uptake that sounded like a question but really was not.

Zach and Goren stopped, faced each other.  Zach studied Goren intently, and Goren got that young man's weak-kneed feeling again.

Slowly, Zach pulled Goren against him.  "Rob?"  Goren had a hunch that Zach wasn't asking for permission but instead asking for a better name.

"Bobby," he said.  "Kind of ridiculous for a man my age, but…."  Goren shrugged.

"Bobby," Zach repeated, his breath low and breathy and Goren was weak all over again.

Zach dipped in for a quick kiss on the lips, pulled back for just a second, then started licking at Goren's mouth.  Not even trying to get in, just tasting Goren's lips.  Goren was too honest with himself not to admit that if he didn't actually whimper out loud it wasn't because he didn't want to.

"Yeah," Zach muttered against Goren's mouth.  "Let me in, Bobby, okay?  Just…let me in."

Goren hadn't realized he was keeping Zach out, but then keeping people out one way or another was such an ingrained habit that he sometimes had to be reminded.  He moaned a little as he parted his lips.

Zach kept licking at Bobby's mouth, slowly, patiently.  Bobby felt himself losing some tension he hadn't even known he was carrying and licked right back.

Zach moaned at the back of his throat, a happy sound that shot right to every good place Robert Goren possessed.  Zach pulled back a little, laughing breathlessly when Bobby tried to follow him.

"It's okay, Bobby," Zach said.  "I just, uh, I just…."  Zach dropped his ice cream cone so he could used both hands to grab at the front of Bobby's shirt, pulling him in again, kissing him again.  This time Zach wasn't tentative; as soon as their lips met, he pushed his tongue in Bobby's mouth and Bobby welcomed him.  Zach lazily flicked his tongue against Bobby's, but Bobby answered languor with urgency and Zach responded in kind.

They kissed for a long time.  Zach's left hand let go of Bobby's shirt, moved around to his back, pulled him closer still.  Bobby moaned again, feeling the helpless, glorious stupidity of desire.

Zach leaned back, keeping his mouth on Bobby's.

"Bobby," he said.  "What am I going to do with you?"

Goren had plenty of suggestions, but knew better than to propose any.

"I, uh, really don't want to mess you up worse, you know?" Zach added.

Goren privately wondered if that were even possible, but knew better than to say so out loud.

"'Cause if you've never done this and I screw it up for you, maybe that's something I don't want to do, the guy I don't want to be," Zach said.

Bobby laughed a little.  "If it worked like that for me," he said truthfully, "I'd've gone completely celibate when I was a junior in high school."

Zach laughed back at him, kissed him again like he couldn't stop himself.

Goren wasn't sure what Zach's ethical framework was, if he'd be able to bend the rules for Goren just this once.  He was pretty sure that Zach wouldn't ruin anything for him, but only Zach could make that decision for himself.  Goren hoped Zach was as turned on as he was, ready to drop his concerns like he'd ditched his ice cream.

But even if Zach regained himself, decided Bobby was too much risk, there was still this moment, right now, on the corner of Mulberry and Prince, Old St. Patrick's looming next to them, when Robert Goren, Bobby to his friends, was kissing a man he'd met in a bar.  Kissing Zach who spoke hesitantly and softly and maybe had some ethics and concerns, but played piano and kissed with inventive authority.  And, for the rest of his life, no matter what happened next, in some part of Bobby's mind, he'd always be on that corner, kissing Zach.


End file.
